INSUBCONTINENT EXCLUSIVE:
As workers moved from office to home and students moved to being educated online, demand for new PCs surged in Q1, but Canalys found that
shipments actually dropped 8% in spite of this, due to COVID-19 related supply chain problems.
The 8% drop was the worst since 2016 when
shipments dropped 12%, according to the firm
Companies were looking to get new machines into the hands of employees who normally worked on desktop machines in the office, while parents
were buying machines for children suddenly going to school online.
Rushabh Doshi, research director at Canalys says that products were
flying off the shelves in Q1, but the PC makers couldn&t keep up with demand as supplies were limited due to a number of factors.
&…PC
makers started 2020 with a constrained supply of Intel processors, caused by a botched transition to 10nm nodes
This was exacerbated when factories in China were unable to reopen after the Lunar New Year holidays.
&The slowdown in supply met with
accelerated demand, as businesses were suddenly forced to equip a newly remote workforce, placing urgent orders for tens of thousands of PCs
Children, too, needed their own PCs, as schools closed and lessons went online,& Doshi explained in a statement.
Lenovo and HP owned the
lion share of the PC market in Q1 with 23.9% and 21.8% share respectively
Dell was in third with 19.6%
Apple was well behind in fourth place with just 6% of worldwide market share.
Only Dell projected positive growth with a modest 1.1% annual
All others were projected to be negative with Apple projecting the sharpest drop at -21%.
The good news is that from a revenue
perspective, at least for the short term, these companies could command higher prices due to high demand and low supply, but overall the
year looks bleak for PC makers, as Canalys predicts the rest of the year will see a further drop in sales as companies cut back on
purchases, and consumers also likely limit purchases with so much economic uncertainty and demand satisfied for the short term.
